GMU on climate scientists: we are the 97%

More Durban PR ramp-up, this time from GMU, recycling old news and old claims.

Widespread Public Misperception about Scientific Agreement on Global Warming Undermines Climate Policy Support

FAIRFAX, Va.-People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.

This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.

In the national survey conducted in June 2010, two-thirds of respondents said they either believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening (45 percent), that most scientists think it is not happening (5 percent), or that they did not know enough to say (16 percent.) These respondents were less likely to support climate change policies and to view climate change as a lower priority.

By contrast, survey respondents who correctly understood that there is widespread agreement about global warming among scientists were themselves more certain that it is happening, and were more supportive of climate policies.

“Misunderstanding the extent of scientific agreement about climate change is important because it undermines people’s certainty that climate change is happening, which in turn reduces their conviction that America should find ways to deal with the problem,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this misperception. “It is no accident that so many Americans misunderstand the widespread scientific agreement about human-caused climate change. A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement. The climate science community should take all reasonable measures to put this myth to rest.”

About George Mason University

George Mason University is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with global distinction in a range of academic fields. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., Mason provides students access to diverse cultural experiences and the most sought-after internships and employers in the country. Mason offers strong undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering and information technology, organizational psychology, health care and visual and performing arts. With Mason professors conducting groundbreaking research in areas such as climate change, public policy and the biosciences, George Mason University is a leading example of the modern, public university. George Mason University-Where Innovation Is Tradition.

How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position. [1]

To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.

The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.

This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.

The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.

To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.

Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.

As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.

In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.

Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings [2]. Are you?

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.

It’s happening, OK? But the anthropogenic part? Puhleeeeze. Tell me, without the toxic stochastism, how you can tell what the cause is, or to what degree you can distinguish the human component. Until then please be quiet with all the wastage and repetition.

I believe in climate change. I believe that humans are causing climate change. I believe that humans are causing the climate to warm.
Unfortunately for the GMU claims, I also believe that humans are not at fault for any amount that the climate is changing that makes any measurable or functional difference. I also don’t believe that we have been able to adequately measure what the real human signature of the “warming” is. I also believe that the amount of climate change caused by humans is so far overshadowed by natural variability as to be almost not worthy of discussion.
It is worthy of discussion, and further scientific study, but not political policy, and certainly not increased taxes. It is worthy because we do not know.
75 scientists should be used as a 97% quantifier for the purposes of selling hamburgers, not public policy.

Every person who reads this should email Tara Laskowski, tlaskows@gmu.edu and ask her if she really wants George Mason University associated with this egregiously biased and purposely misleading pseudo-scientific report. This report and its deceptions deserve wide-spread exposure of the tawdry methods used to promote AGW.
I can only think that Edward Maibach, Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason, sees his funding and perhaps his position, disappearing along with AGW as the truth becomes known.

Doner Gone Galt says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:32 am
A recent survey of professional Psychics revealed that 97% feel they provide valuable service for their customers too.
———————————————————————————
Yes but did the Psychics “predict” that outcome, or did they merely model it?

I find the oft repeated lie that climate sceptics have a huge, well funded propaganda machine and that this is the reason that the general public is not convinced quite interesting. Not only is this not true but it is the precise opposite of true. In the UK we have constant warmist propaganda from the BBC. They are funded by a kind of extortion racket and despite having a charter stating that they provide balanced reporting have a policy in place that excludes AGW sceptics from being heard. On commercial radio we have constant advertisements urging us all to “Act on CO2” by buying a green car, defrosting our freezer and buying low energy lightbulbs.
Interesting also is that the actual reason that people don’t believe the 97% consensus among scientists figure is that it isn’t true. Much like climate alarmism in general then.
I think that people’s everyday experiences must play a part in their scepticism. As I understand it, global temperatures have been more or less level over the past decade. In my little corner of the world, England, just north of the Humber, it has become significantly colder. During the late nineties we had baking hot summers and snow free winters and I was having to mow my lawn all year round because the winters were so mild. The last three winters have been relatively hard, the spring of 2010 was so cold that none of my veggies grew and last winter we had snow two feet deep. I have seen snow deeper than that caused by drifting but I have never seen it that deep due to just the sheer volume of it. I can now imagine people from colder climes laughing at what the English describe as a hard winter but I’m OK with that.

I’ll see their 77 scientists, and raise them 31,000 scientists, who all co-signed the following statement:

The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.

“Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this . . .”
Sounds that they have a pressing need to launch a propaganda scheme to get the ignorant masses in line with those who “correctly understood.”

Did you notice the oh so subtle switch in nomenclature near the top of the article from what they were asking scientist about:
“global warming”
to later the morph to:
“human-caused climate change”.
Nothing more than snake-oil salesmen calling themselves scientists.
Nothing new to see. Move along.

I was of the opinion that the GMU results – the 97% consensus finding – was dead on arrival. On first reading that a online survey had uncovered 97% of scientists believed in the CAGW orthodoxy, I thought it was the work of Greenpeace, not of an academic institution.
On learning of the widespread abuses carried out in assembling these figures, and the amount of derision heaped upon it in the blogs, I thought that was the end of it. A farcical piece of nonsense had been exposed for the propaganda that it was, and that was the end of the matter. Never did I think in my worst nightmares that there were people who actually believed these results represented reality.
Yet not only do such people exist, but they are the people shaping our destiny.

They know time is running out on the great eon of socialist spending and debt run up. Push for a mandate for Obama to act before he gets torched so it can be put into a 2,000 page law and locked in–see ObamaCare if there are any questions.

“In the national survey conducted in June 2010, two-thirds of respondents said they either believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening (45 percent), that most scientists think it is not happening (5 percent), or that they did not know enough to say (16 percent.) These respondents were less likely to support climate change policies and to view climate change as a lower priority.”

There’s a lot of room for misinterpretation in these surveys. When people are asked if they believe “global warming is happening” they may answer No, not because they don’t believe the world is warming, but because they are aware that “global warming” is commonly used as a shorthand term for either manmade global warming or catastrophic manmade global warming. Similarly, if they’re asked about the degree of disagreement among climate scientists about GW, they may answer that they think it’s significant, because they think correctly that there is significant disagreement about the prospect of catastrophic manmade global warming (for which “GW” is a shorthand term).

“Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this misperception. “It is no accident that so many Americans misunderstand the widespread scientific agreement about human-caused climate change. A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement. The climate science community should take all reasonable measures to put this myth to rest.””

Please do. Then the climate science community will have nailed its colors to the mast, so that when the warm turns they’ll be pilloried as an eternal laughingstock–to the point where the name of the field will have to be changed to avoid snickers.

Its like saying 9 out of ten people who believe CAGW is real believe CAGW is real? Its a poll Jim but not as we know it.
It stinks of desperation, it looks like a BBC poll and they are the worlds foremost authority on rigged and faked polls, I do believe they could do a poll that would place Hitler as more respected than Mother Theresa.

“A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.”
Technically, I think you would find a majority of readers/participants of this blog would agree with that too. This question really misses the point of the whole debate. it isn’t weather or not CO2 contributes to a warmer planet or not — as I said, most here would agree with that. The point is that we don’t know how much it contributes! We don’t know the sensitivity of climate to a change in CO2.
I don’t think you’ll find THAT question being asked of climate scientists because then they really would find some disagreement.

So what if there is a consensus of 97% of scientists who are wrong. Remember those who stood up and endured total ridicule before being proved correct. Alfred Wegener on continental drift, Dan Shechtman and quasicrystals just this year or any to be found here:http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html
There always has to be one or two who challenge and break the consensus to move science forward.

DJ says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:46 am
I believe in climate change. I believe that humans are causing climate change. I believe that humans are causing the climate to warm.
Unfortunately for the GMU claims, I also believe that humans are not at fault for any amount that the climate is changing that makes any measurable or functional difference.
_______
Then what do you base your belief (your words, not mine) that humans are causing climate change on? If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?

Of course 97% of polled scientists agree to some global warming! Now get them to sign a statement that it is due to CO2 and in particular – Man Made CO2. While your at it include a statement saying such slight CO2 warming is harmful. Our food supply obviously loves it. GK

Smokey says:
“CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.”
____
This is an incomplete hypothesis. You’ve not stated the conditions, locations, concentrations, atmospheric pressure, temperatures, etc. Certainly, I can raise the CO2 in your body to a level that would kill you Smokey, so that would disprove your “testable” hypothesis. To be truly scientific and “testable” you need to state the conditions for your test, and very accurately define the rather nebulous terms “harmless” and “beneficial”. A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.

I guess no one has actually read the full Doran thesis? (I have) just the 2 page PDF
Perhaps it’s time for another guest post…
It is comedy gold…. a couple of extracts… (there are very many, sounding very sceptically
(Doran appendi F&G from some of the PARTIPANTS in the survey)
—————————-
I just did your survey on global warming and I just wanted to make a couple of comments as follows:
1. I believe in global warming, both short term (my lifetime) and long term (10,000 years). I also believe in cycles and that someday we will see cooling.
2. I believe that global warming is caused, to at least some degree, by human activity.
3. I am not absolutely convinced, however, that carbon dioxide is the culprit. I think that remains to be proved. Carbon dioxide is complicated
——————————–
I just filled out your survey.
One brief comment. The first question is extremely difficult to answer in a non-pejorative way. Global temperatures before 1800 were highly variable but could not be accurately recorded, the Vikings made it to Greenland because of very warm temperatures at around 1000 AD.
As such, I had a very hard time answering the first question as time was not placed in context. Do I believe that the rate of change in global temperature in the past 40- years is instrumentally
unprecedented …yes! Is human actively associated with this…most likely. Are we polluting…most certainly!!!
I am disturbed by that first question as I very strongly believe that the response that you get will in no way reflect the complexity of how geoscientists view this issue.
———————————-
Just a quick note to give feedback on why I bailed out of the survey.
“Question 1: When compared with pre-1800’s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 1800 -> when? Time frames for such comparisons are critical, as there is clearly natural variation that we are trying to separate from an anthropogenic effect. It did not make sense to continue given that none of the allowed responses were valid (this is not a case of ‘no opinion/don’t know’).
This was a very simplistic and biased questionaire. Considering it was aimed at geoscientists, it had no time depth consideration at all, not even the short-range time depth of including the Little Ice Age, let alone the influence of orbital cycles, etc. I’m not sure what you are trying to prove,

What?! 97% of people whose livelihoods depend on the AGW research funding pipeline believe that AGW is real? Shocker!
Next you are going to tell me that 97% of ExxonMobil employees drive cars powered by gasoline engines…

sorry for typo’s dashed off quickly, as children’s bedtime..
the ‘Doran’ (97% scientists) thesis is about 150 pages long, and the feedback from the scientists that participated, makes them sound like a bunch of sceptics!

George Mason University finds that a large percentage of the population is engaging the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy when reasoning about the topic of Global Warming.
Rather than educate the public about logical fallacies, and provide advice on valid methods of reasoning, George Mason University chooses instead to reinforce the fallacious reasoning and exploit the naivite of the population for political gain.
This is “a leading example of a modern public university”.

A real scientist would disagree with the term ‘global’
when applied to ‘warming’
because it implies the entire globe warmed
when a third of the globe (mostly southern oceans)
got colder.
A real scientist would say that
some regions SEEM to have had minor warming
but the temperature network is too crude
to measure it accurately enough
to be alarmed about anything.
A real scientist would point out
that ‘global average temperature’
is thermodynamically meaningless,
a pointless exercise in statistical fluff.

DJ says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:46 am
I believe in climate change. I believe that humans are causing climate change. I believe that humans are causing the climate to warm.
Unfortunately for the GMU claims, I also believe that humans are not at fault for any amount that the climate is changing that makes any measurable or functional difference.
_______
Then what do you base your belief (your words, not mine) that humans are causing climate change on? If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?

I can light a match and the climate impact is there. I can plow a field or pave a highway and the climate will change. It has to, because for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and we live in the “climate”. Will some of those things offset each other? Probably. Will some be additive? Probably. Will they cause some “tipping point”? I really doubt it–the earth has seen, for example, far higher CO2 levels or much more ice cover than we currently have, and here we are without any “tipping point’. And that’s all DJ is saying (and you don’t need some computer running at jiggahertz speed on some contrived climate model to tell you that–it’s all just common sense). Will you make some logical point about it? I’ve yet to see it.
(You’re not becoming a skeptic, are you R? That would be unprecedented!)

A recent survey suggested 100% agreed god existed , given their the ‘experts ‘ and given they all agreed, God most therefore exist . Or perhaps its not that simply ?
Meanwhile here is some basic maths , to know what percentage a sub-group is of the whole group you have to know the whole group size as well as the sub-group size . As yet there is NO research that tell us the size of the group called ‘scientists ‘ climate or otherwise, therefore you can not say what percentage any number of people represents as you don’t know the whole group size .
So next time you see this claim being made , simply ask them for the research to provides the data on the number of scientists.

“A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.”
False, humans would do quite fine at those concentrations and all plant-life on this planet would idealy be at around 2000PPM. Wheat, corn etc all grow much better under those levels, need less nutrients, grow faster, need less sunlight, and need less water.
So what is there that is bad about CO2 at that level?
But yet, you might have a point that at some point too much of a good thing might not be good.
Heck, water can kill you, so lets ban that while we are at it, right Rgates?
Ban di-hydrogen monoxide TODAY! Let me give you a hint on this just to help you along. The correct application of the pre-cautionary principle forbids its own application! It is a simple logical fallacy to ever use and to use such platititudes as “well we are adding more CO2 and it must be bad” is such bad science as to just be laughable.
If you really want to figure out the truth on this subject, go back to square one and learn about the basics of CO2. That is what most of us sceptics did when we figured out the that there were logical and reasoning fallacies in the entire AGW theory in the first place. And after you apply the basics you come up with such a terrible house of cards to be just laughable.
Indeed, if humanity has had a measurable impact on temperatures why haven’t we seen a tropospheric hot spot that get HOTTER as CO2 concentrations rise? Indeed, that is your missing link and it will remain missing as we continue to “fail to warm” due to such a terrible theory that forgot the first steps in the scientific theory which of course is to invalidate the null hypothesis.

just the usual out of date cant,
Mr Watts
I am submitting a short ‘paper’ for your estimable bloggers peer review.
subject to the normal critisims and corrections i intend to subit it to the IPCC.
THE PLEADING ROSE
I am a vivid flowering rose,
delighting eye and balm to nose,
i thrive on heat and morning dew
but most of all on Co2.
so please dont limit it the nigh
or elso i will just wilt and die,
i grow in rain and sun from skies
and gas to photosynthesize.
i’m not a scientist like you
with mega grants and peer review,
please explain to a plant like me
the workings of IPCC,
can it be wise to stop the clock
then turn it back to an epoch,
when i was cold and half this size
true scientists helped me hybridize.
all those airmiles and pulp from trees
to promulgate those treatise,
designed to spread alarm and fear
of a trace gas which i hold dear,
your past deliberations show
if you were honest – ‘you dont know’,
what future tempreatures will be
i hope it’s warmer – just for me!
perhaps you could add a poetery section to your cartoons/humour section above?
plenty more MMGW doggerel where this comes from
regards
Pat Healy.

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
“Then what do you base your belief (your words, not mine) that humans are causing climate change on? If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?”
Simple. Humans are emitting greenhouse gasses which includes altering atmospheric water content. Humans are also adding to atmospheric aerosol content. Those factors do contribute to climate, hence climate “change”. The question that remains unanswered is exactly how much, and what is the net sign. I will concede a small flaw in my statement about functional difference, but that cuts to UHI, and not the principle issue we’re really discussing here, which is CO2.
But you’re asking about my beliefs and my proofs.
You yourself are clever at warping the words. Note I said “believe”, and you acknowledge that where you say “belief”. I don’t need proof to say belief.

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.
==============================================================
Gates, why didn’t you just shoot your whole wad, go for broke, and claim CO2 levels of 40,000 ppm?
What we grow for wheat and corn have absolutely nothing to do with the original wheat and corn..you know that.
We will just develop new strains of wheat and corn, just like we have in the past, and just like we are doing right now……………….More than likely much more productive strains

97% of every group is likely to believe that their group is right.
I’d also bet real money that 97% of leftists believe Dubya was a horrible President (the remaining 3% believe he was never President at all, what with the hanging chads…)
On the face of it, the entire item from GMU is complete and total crap, a painfully transparent attempt to make people believe something that just isn’t true. Your 97% might very well believe something, but the overwhelming number of scientists in other, related disciplines saying otherwise can’t be ignored.
On the other hand, the GMU item is accomplishing its goal: convincing the uneducated, the ignorant, and those who just don’t care enough to find out the reality.

“Misunderstanding the extent of scientific agreement about climate change is important because it undermines people’s certainty that climate change is happening, which in turn reduces their conviction that America should find ways to deal with the problem,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
Well that is well into ” He would say that” territory which is the nub of the issue. On what basis do we trust the witnesses?
It is the presence of the Edward Maibach’s and his ilk that are the problem. By his job title, he simply appears to be a propagandist like Al Gore and all the others.

Does anyone happen to know what concentration of CO2 is reached in, let’s say, a crowded theater, or a den with six adults hyper-excited and watching football for hours, or a convention center by humans merely breathing. I’d be very curious just what actual high levels of CO2 we commonly “survive” every single day.

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
R., that is really a silly play at being devil’s advocate. You need to answer that question yourself.
R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
And stay on one side of the fence.

What is the common thread in all these articles leading up to Durban.
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
No organisation is more dependent on maintaining the concept than this organisation.
It is a propaganda mouthpiece from beginning to end. It has no other function.

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?
==========================================
Which brings with it an interesting point…..
We have let the very people claiming it’s ab-normal……….define what is normal
Truth is, we have no proof that there is any thing abnormal about the climate right now…….

I was reading a story on the GWPF site – “IPCC Fails In Education About Climate Change”.
It was translated from de spiegal online. I went to their site which is in German and noted a picture credited to Reuters/Greenpeace. This picture of a dead tree in a desert of red sand clearly designed to emgender fears of a thermageddon hell on Earth.
The problem is they forgot to trim the photo to remove the Southern Cross windmill from the corner.
A Sothern Cross Windmill in a sea of red sand means only one thing – Central Australia.
Now I don’t wish to pour cold water on alarmism but Central Australia has been a red sand desert for who knows how long as aboriiginal occupation can only be traced some 40,000 years but it seems to have been desert for that long.
Another example of deception – much like the water vapour shown belching from heat exchange stacks deceptively meant to convey pollution because the pollution control measures introduced throught the 60’s and 70’s cleaned up the particulates emitted from power station such that visible emissions all but disappeared.
Perhaps the global warming/climate change advocates might attract less hostility if they stopped their deceptive artistic attachments.

All this argument about a little warming.
It is accepted the Earth, the biosphere and animal life survived even 12 degrees C higher temperatures thaan today and somehow managed to stagger back into an ice age.
What alarmists never acknowledge is that we are actually in an ice age today – or more correctly an interglacial period of an ice age.
A return to conditions where the glaciers begin to advance will have much more serious consequences for humanity than a 1 -2 degree increase in temperature.
I would have thought people living in high latitudes where the climate is cold or cool for the majority of the year could only benefit from some moderate warming AND that is what has been observed – moderate warming.
People should actually be hoping “greenhouse gases” will prevent a return to colder ice age conditions.
My bet is they won’t and some day temperatures will start to decrease like they have done repeatedly in a fairly regular cycle over the duration of the recent ice age and the glaciers will begin to advance again.
Stop wasting your life worrying about things you cannot control.
No-one will be able to stop the ice age returning if it commences.
No-one can stop the “greenhouse gas” emissions if the Chinese and Indian governments decide they do not believe.
There is much to be thankful for in the modern world. Few remember that only a few generations ago most people lived hard lives, most work was manual and life expectancy was short. If you had a disability at birth life was even more miserable than than the average.
The people who lived through these hard times would be simply astounded that we worry about what might happen – their attention was completely focused on producing enough food during the warm seasons.
Don’t worry – be happy.

Steph says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:32 am
There are several other studies. All say pretty much the same thing.
=========================================================
No, there are not several other studies that show 97% consensus. Read your page that you offered……..
Anderegg, Prall, Harold, and Schneider, 2010 only reference “pal reviewed” writers, using an arbitrary criteria. Given the well documented difficulties skeptics have getting published, this study is invalidated by its selection criteria.
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009….. that’s where all of 75 scientists made up the 97%.
Bray and von Storch, 2008 show a markedly lower percentage. Oddly, it hasn’t been used in peer review publication. See my comment about selection criteria to understand why.
STATS, 2007, again, shows a significantly lower percentage. (And the selection criteria is, again, highly suspect as to being valid. A study conducted by……. you guessed it! GMU!)
Oreskes, 2004…… the selection criteria was so laughable, its hardly worth mentioning. The papers had to have the words, “global climate change” before being selected.
Bray and von Storch, 2003 shows a near 50/50 split in the surveying…… again….. there weren’t enough pals to get it published.
So, there you have it. Only 3 studies that actually poll scientists, not confined by organization affiliation. Only one came up with the 97% number, or greater than 90% for that matter, and that had the least amount of respondents.
Further, you should look at the way questions are framed. I’d estimate that >90% of skeptics agree that the earth has generally warmed since the 18th century. I’d also estimate that >90% skeptics agree that CO2 is a GHG. Most of the skepticism lays at the “catastrophic” part of CAGW, the lack of empirical data, and the attempts to flip the null hypothesis, that is to say, climatologists avoidance of the scientific process. So, please, tell your alarmist friends to quit mischaracterizing people’s positions and views. It serves no purpose other than to obfuscate.

So in summary:
Gorebull warming is defined by 75 out of 77 participants out of 10,257 scientists, who are absolutely sure of CAGW using 30 years of temperature data out of 12,000 years (=0,4%) since beginning of the holocene?
What is the significance of 97% from 0,4%?
My oh my…

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 amA world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
2000 ppm *IS* harmless even for humans. CO2 is harmless until it comes near 6%.
6%, that is the constant and necessary CO2 level in our lungs to allow blood gas exchange.
A very minor +/- deviation can cause death.
So it doesn’t play a role for humans if the atmosphere has 400 ppm or 2000 ppm CO2.

The poll was conducted by Peter T Doran – a Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and a Post Grad research student.http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/index.html
Please make bookmark this paper for future reference if you need require an example of
– How climate scientists cherry-pick the data.
– How the weak evidence (In this case two banal questions) do not support the extreme conclusions (Future accelerating warming with catastrophic consequences)
– How climate scientists fail to observe basic statistical tests. In this case an unbiased sample of 77 would have little significance even if a true random sample (Note that political opinion polls need to have at least 1000 people). However, as a biased sample, any significance tests are rendered useless.
– If you are a teacher of statistics needing an example for students to “spot the errors”.
– The failure of peer review to spot obvious errors.http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf

If I drop an ice cube into an Olympic swimming pool, will it lower the temperature of the water? 100% of scientists will say yes. If I then ask whether the temperature change is either measurable or meaningful, I get a good analogy to the climate debate.

According to the US FDA, Cetero Research, a North Carolina based CRO, allegedly produced fake clinical trial documents and test results over a period of 5 years….The falsification was described by the FDA as “extensive” …The company asserts to have conducted over 20,000 pharmacology studies in its history…… There were at least 875 instances where lab chemists were not even present at the facility while test samples were being extracted…. The FDA also found fabricated data from multiple studies for multiple clinical trial sponsors in addition to inconsistent date and time records….http://www.clinicalresearchsociety.org/2011/07/28/fda-says-cro-cetero-faked-trial-data-pharmas-may-need-to-redo-tests/

And to top that off at the beginning of November, a well respected Dutch psychologist, Diederik Stapel. “admitted that he falsified numerous studies in an effort to meet the academic demand to “publish” and to “perform” and was subsequently suspended from his position at the university….He has admitted making up data and faking research over many years in studies which were then published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.” from the Pyschiatric Crime Database. http://www.psychcrime.org/news/index.php?vd=1288&t=Dutch+psychologist+falsified+dozens+of+papers%3B+suspended+from+university
Even on Google a search of “scientists falsified” returns 1,280,000 results.
I really doubt that the ” ignorant masses” are going to trust scientists again any time soon. I certainly won’t . Once trust is lost it is much harder to regain.

Gates says:
“This is an incomplete hypothesis.”
It’s an abbreviated form of my complete hypothesis, which I have posted repeatedly:CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere at current and projected global concentrations.
That is a testable and falsifiable hypothesis. Unfortunately for Gates, no one has been able to falsify it – unlike the repeatedly falsified CO2=CAGW conjecture.

R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
Smokey says:
“CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.”
____
This is an incomplete hypothesis. You’ve not stated the conditions, locations, concentrations, atmospheric pressure, temperatures, etc. Certainly, I can raise the CO2 in your body to a level that would kill you Smokey, so that would disprove your “testable” hypothesis. To be truly scientific and “testable” you need to state the conditions for your test, and very accurately define the rather nebulous terms “harmless” and “beneficial”. A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human</b or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.

[emphasis mine]
R. Gates:
While the thrust of your statement is basically true regarding conditions, the co2 ppm you state are questionable. Having read many of Smokey’s posts in the past,I’m sure it was just an oversight in not qualifying his statement.
See below:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/21/happer-on-the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases/
“…
Although human beings and many other animals would do well with no CO2 at all in the air, there is an upper limit that we can tolerate. Inhaling air with a concentration of a few percent, similar to the concentration of the air we exhale, hinders the diffusional exchange of CO2 between the blood and gas in the lung. Both the United States Navy (for submariners) and nasa (for astronauts) have performed extensive studies of human tolerance to CO2. As a result of these studies, the Navy recommends an upper limit of about 8000 ppm for cruises of ninety days, and nasa recommends an upper limit of 5000 ppm</b. for missions of one thousand days, both assuming a total pressure of one atmosphere. Higher levels are acceptable for missions of only a few days.
…”

R. Gates;
A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.>>>
If the average farmer could get the air in their wheat and corn fields up to 2,000 ppm, they would be ecstatic. Greenhouse operations pump far more than that into their greenhouses because production sky rockets and the plants need less water (amongst other benefits). The only reason the same isn’t done for wheat and corn is it is really hard to scale a greenhouse that big.
Once again you are hoisted on your own petard. You pretend to knowledge that does not stand up to factual scrutiny.

RE: 2000 PPM of CO2
Satellites show no decadal reduction
in the Earth’s IR radiance at the edges
of the 15 micron CO2 band,
even though 30 years of CO2 increase
should have discernibly widenened the 15 micron band.
Theoretically, MODTRAN shows a ‘forcing’
of only 0.75 degrees C per CO2 doubling.
All the so blathered-about huge delta T
is merely postulated runaway forcing by water,
never backed up by measurement because
it is only valid for long-ago warm regines
such as the Cretaceous or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM),
when there was a circum-global warm current and a frost-free Arctic.
When it’s already warm and wet then CO2 does have some leverage,
but in an icehouse CO2 has most of its affect going from 180 to 280 ppm.
In our ice-house regime, 2000 ppm will only need 1.75 deg C
added to the Earth’s IR temperature
for the slightly wider 15 micron CO2 band.
It would only take a modest increase in low clouds or snow
to wipe that out entirely, such as with recent weather.

waterside4 says:
November 21, 2011 at 12:20 pm
just the usual out of date cant,
Mr Watts
I am submitting a short ‘paper’ for your estimable bloggers peer review.
subject to the normal critisims and corrections i intend to subit it to the IPCC.
THE PLEADING ROSE
I am a vivid flowering rose,
delighting eye and balm to nose,
i thrive on heat and morning dew
but most of all on Co2.
so please dont limit it the nigh
or elso i will just wilt and die,
i grow in rain and sun from skies
and gas to photosynthesize.
i’m not a scientist like you
with mega grants and peer review,
please explain to a plant like me
the workings of IPCC,
can it be wise to stop the clock
then turn it back to an epoch,
when i was cold and half this size
true scientists helped me hybridize.
all those airmiles and pulp from trees
to promulgate those treatise,
designed to spread alarm and fear
of a trace gas which i hold dear,
your past deliberations show
if you were honest – ‘you dont know’,
what future tempreatures will be
i hope it’s warmer – just for me!
perhaps you could add a poetery section to your cartoons/humour section above?
plenty more MMGW doggerel where this comes from
regards
Pat Healy.
———————————————
Pat, I do hope you send this to Pam Ayers, who is doing a tour of her ‘doggerel’ recitals in Australia at present, I can just hear it in her west-country accent in my head as I read it, and it would fit in well with her down to earth subjects. She was interviewed on 2GB.com this last week, maybe they can put you in touch. 🙂

“Tex says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:58 am
Next you are going to tell me that 97% of ExxonMobil employees drive cars powered by gasoline engines…”
97% of scientists and politicians that warn about the dangers of CO2 drive cars powered by gasoline. The other 3% drive diesel.

petermue says:
November 21, 2011 at 2:28 ……………………………………………………
2000 ppm *IS* harmless even for humans. CO2 is harmless until it comes near 6%.
6%, that is the constant and necessary CO2 level in our lungs to allow blood gas exchange.
A very minor +/- deviation can cause death.
So it doesn’t play a role for humans if the atmosphere has 400 ppm or 2000 ppm CO2.
————————————————————————————
I’m not sure but, 60,000 ppm seems to be a big number.

The actual study:http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf
While 97% is accurate when restricted to all climatologists actively publishing on climate-change, of which there were 77 respondents, the number only reduces to 90% when all active publishers in any scientific discipline were considered.
It seems to be splitting hairs to object to the 97% number when 90% of all actively publishing scientists still agree that there is significant anthropogenic global warming. Ninety percent is still a valid consensus. Let’s deal bluntly with the facts. Even those that are inconvenient for us. There very likely is significant anthropogenic global warming. But that’s a GOOD thing. AGW is legitimate. It requires wild unsupportable exaggeration to turn it into *Catastophic* warming. The apt term would be BAGW (Beneficial Anthropogenic Global Warming).

R. Gates says: November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
Smokey says:
“CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.”
____
This is an incomplete hypothesis. You’ve not stated the conditions, locations, concentrations, atmospheric pressure, temperatures, etc.
How about this planet, at any of these naturally occurring concentrations over the past 200 X 10^6 years: http://i46.tinypic.com/2582sg6.jpg

Dave Springer,
Please quantify what is “significant” AGW. IMHO, “significant” doesn’t apply to a change of ≈1°C. That is not runaway global warming, or climate disruption, or catastrophic. On balance, the net effect would be entirely beneficial. A 2° rise would be even better.
With one-third of the planet’s population subsisting on $1 a day or less, the opening up of millions of hectares to agriculture in Canada, Mongolia, Siberia, etc., would be a huge benefit to humanity.

This should serve to remind us to take all such statements about this or that, with suspicion. Buyer beware in all things, not just climate science spin. Think education spin, health care spin, jobs spin, and certainly any spin on either side of the blue/red divide (or whatever colors your political groups are in your country).

I read in a book by David Attenborough (on Life) that 3 million years ago when humans’ early ancestors had separated from the primate common ancestor and evolution was continuing apace, the paleoclimatologists he consulted showed him convincing evidence that CO2 levels at the time were 11% of the atmosphere. Why didn’t life just suffocate?
The paleoclimatologists have said the evidence shows CO2 levels have been even higher because the world, not in an Ice Age, has been much warmer leading to higher residual CO2! Life is still here – seems to survive well. I would suggest too little CO2 is the real threat and another glaciation could produce such an effect (it almost did last time according to the experts getting down to 170ppm when plant life needs at least 150ppm to continue to exist).
For me the evidence seems to say that the level of residual CO2 in the atmosphere is directly related to the temperature of the oceans. I do get it that climate is a dreadfully complicated business and CO2 is irrelivant.
Travelling in a Climate Controlled people-carrier car, the eight of us became very sleepy – but I believe it was due to depletion of O2 not the build-up of CO2.

First they pick their cherries, then they *choose* cherries from among those they have picked, then they *select* their favorite cherries from among the ‘chosen ones.’
Rule 13 of the MS program (Mendaciousness for Scientists): “Do as much culling of the data as you can *before* you start to write the report, so nobody can see what you are doing.”

Yup. Solomon’s critique is pretty worthless. There’s widespread agreement of opinion among scientists that there’s some significant degree of anthropogenic global warming. The disagreement begins in considering what can or should be done about it. The reality of the situation is that no practical means exists to change human activity enough to matter. The reality of the situation is that an ice age was coming without anthropogenic global warming and that will be even more catastrophic than global warming with regard to civilization. It’s unclear if AGW is sufficient to prevent the end of the current interglacial period. The reality of the situation is that in the short term anthropogenic global warming is a great net benefit to agriculture and there are few if any downsides to it. In the long term it may be a great benefit if it can end the ice age and of no consequence if it does not.

Moderate climate change will likely increase yields of North American rain fed agriculture, but with smaller increases and more spatial variability than in earlier estimates. Most studies project likely climate-related yield increases of 5-20 percent over the first decades of the century, with the overall positive effects of climate persisting through much or all of the 21st century.
I’m not making this stuff up. To the extent that global warming is real and quantifiable it’s a great net benefit. If it can prevent or moderate the severe cooling episodes that have plagued humanity on and off for a million years and at least once in the past 1000 years it’ll be a much greater boon than the EPA and IPCC are forced to admit. Downsides on the other hand are all speculative and those that have been predicted to happen in the short term have utterly failed to materialize. It appears that some modest anthropogenic global warming has occurred, will continue to occur, and it’s a great net benefit because, simply and indisputably, the earth is in an ice age and ice ages are not conducive to a large, vibrant, productive and fecund biosphere.

Dave Springer:
I am having a tough time distilling the essence of your climate paradigm. Sometimes I agree with everything you write and at other times… nothing makes sense. I am sure it is my failing (I find blogging very discombobulating) so I was wondering, if you have summarized your climate position somewhere that I may read it, in entirety. I ask out of genuine interest and not for additional info, to use against your comments. I think you may have many genuine insights and I would like to understand you better. If not, have a nice day! GK

A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement.

In the interests of full disclosure I think Anthony and the other regular contributors to this blog should divulge how many millions received in compensation for participating in this “disinformation campaign”. /sarc

Not as good as Julian’s but I wrote this TWO years ago, and it was published in local papers.
ODE FROM A CARBON WHORE
When I was young and flighty
I rarely wore me nightie
Now I’m old and failing
Bank balances are also ailing! (Ahhh?)
So – me thought and with thinking
Invented a ship that was sinking! (SOS)
HMS CO2 is warming – effing shocking.
Rescuers never saw it and me docking.
They traded in their carbon credits,
Adding trillions to the masses’ debits,
‘Somethings wrong?” screamed a smart sage,
“It’s snowing – cometh another bleedin’ ice age?”
So? “We made a slight error”, I replied
“Be grateful now – you could all have died”,
As temps plummet – just close the door,
Cos – I’m off to warmer climes with Al Gore!”
And so be it. LOL

“Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this misperception.”
But where can we find someone to mount this well-funded campaign to correct the misperception in the public mind?
Ed Maibach wouldn’t be available? “Ed [Maibach] joined the George Mason University faculty in 2007 to create the Center for Climate Change Communication. Trained in public health and communication, he has extensive experience as an academic researcher and as a communication and social marketing practitioner in government, business, and the non-profit sector. His research focuses on the broad question of how public engagement in climate change can be expanded and enhanced.”
So the public health and communications social marketing practitioner says what they really need is….a public health and communications social marketing practitioner, to explain that the co2 global modelers absolutely all agree that the co2 global models are correct.

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